'I'm sorry, don't mind me, I'm in a terrible mood.'

Elisabeth pinched her lips and said nothing: this was one dangerously winning smile Thomas Wickham Lorcan George Reilly was throwing at the floor right now. It transformed him beyond recognition. He started rubbing the back of his head with a long, chewed-nailed, nicotine-stained hand, and looked back up.

'I've just been dumped.'

'I see,' she said, curious that her curiosity should be piqued.

Thus far this evening, the former occupant of her room in Archway had proved a humourless, irritable individual in the Fitzwilliam Kingsley-Darcy mould. Hence the fact that after an almost two-hour acquaintance he and Elisabeth were still on full first, middle and last names basis. Hence too the fact that so far she'd seen nothing in him other than an angry young Irishman. His forehead was broad and pale, as were his cheekbones. His face narrowed into a triangular chin. His mouth was wide, red and angry, the eyes green and angry, even the shock of black hair on top looked angry. All wrapped up in beat up jeans and a pissed-off looking dark green sweater unravelling at the cuffs and collar.

Now all of a sudden he was announcing he was single and shooting her this cutest of am-I-drunk-or-is-it-looking-at-you looks. You know, the kind where eyes light up and sparkle for your eyes only. The kind so very cute, in fact, that Elisabeth suspected a signature flirting manoeuvre.

She had to hand it to Tom, it was a good one. She tucked her hair back and reminded herself that she was not in Oxford tonight to pick up an angry young man, Irish or otherwise, but merely the boxes of her stuff still left at her brother's.

That was what she'd told Charlotte anyway. In practice they both knew she was here to dodge mini ping-pong with Mike.

Ben and Mac had driven her over in Dead'n Gone's van, an orange VW camper they called "The Moonbus". Tomorrow they were driving back via Hampstead and helping her pick up her stuff. It was really kind of them, offering to help her move in and asking her along to their blokes night out. She'd rather have been playing Twister against Charlotte, who despite her ample proportions has never been beaten at it, than listening to some of the bands playing tonight. But on the other hand her new flatmates were definitely making an effort for her and as all traders know: you win some, you lose some.

'Aren't you gonna go and sound check?' she asked Tom.

'Not yet. Bombshell's on first,' he said, still with that beguiling look.

'I see, different bands.'

Bombshell was another friend of her new flatmates: Tom's new landlord and their host in Oxford tonight. Save for the platinum hair falling in a thick curtain over his eyebrows, Elisabeth did not think he lived up to his nickname. That fat bumbling young toryboy journalist maybe, what was his name, Boris Johnson? He might have been closer to the mark. Meanwhile Tom's eyes were still sparkling away at Elisabeth, so she reached for a fresh and neutral topic of conversation:

'So you nervous?'

'What?'

'Stage-fright perhaps?'

If anything, Tom now turned the eye sparkle up a notch, so that Elisabeth felt herself blush, wondering whether she'd just blurted out another one of her classic involuntary double-entendres. Like that time shortly after moving to London when she'd told a classmate that he "should have made her come" to his tutorial presentation on Eugene Fama's critique of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. Likewise now, Elisabeth began to wonder whether "stage-fright" was indeed the right translation of the much more alliterative French word "trac".

'Stage-fright? That's funny. Why would you say that?'

The venue for this open mic was the basement of a small pub in Summertown, and as the crowd thickened and Bombshell's band sound checked she had to raise her voice and lean closer to Tom to explain the obvious:

'Well, I don't know, you're about to go on stage, I'm just asking…'

'You really are funny,' he said, pulling back and examining her. 'I'm glad Lily found you: good advice,' he nodded.

'What's good advice?'

'Staying trite,' he said during a lull in the stage noise. 'That's probably what this crowd is in for tonight.'

She frowned from him to the floor and back, none the wiser.

'Staying what?'

'Trite.'

As he said that, Bombshell's band's guitarist decided to test the tremolo arm on his Strat, which sent an ear-splitting wave of Larsen feedback through the room.

'WHAT?' she shouted at Tom.

'TRITE! WHAT YOU JUST SAID!'

The noise stopped before he'd stopped shouting.

'No, I didn't,' she replied, disappointed. 'What does trite mean?'

Trite, she feared, must be another one of those exasperating English words, like eke and divot. It was deceptively short, and yet impossible to decipher because it sounded neither like what it was, as a bumblebee kindly does, nor like what it was in French - as does, say, prevarication. Tom did not care to enlighten her as to its meaning, but carried on smiling, most likely at her expense.

'So what DID you say?' he asked while the lead guitarist tweaked something, played a few more chords, and started another deafening feedback loop.

'STA-GE FFFFFRIGHT!' she yelled. 'QUESTION MARK!' she added, miming the punctuation for extra clarity.

'OH.'

They stopped shouting to turn to the stage as the band started to play. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves. Their songs were loud and energetic. Mac shuffled in from the back to join Elisabeth and Tom. He knew the lyrics and was nodding his head in time to the beat. Mike had made her stand through much worse, Elisabeth reminded herself.

' ' like their new drummer.' Mac said. She assumed he was talking to Tom, but if either of them had asked her the drummer had more to offer decoratively than musically. This was no idle opinion either, but one based on her twelve years' study of classical percussions back in France. However, since Elisabeth was even more fed up with jokes about the triangle than with jokes about her Frenchisms, she kept this particular skill of hers quiet. Hence, as always happened around the office too, no one sought her opinion, well informed though it would have been. Instead Tom nodded back at Mac:

'New one.' he said at the start of the sixth and, mercifully, last song. New drummer or new song? She never found out: Tom vanished backstage before the song was over, just as Ben showed up with another round of beers.

'Still on water?' Mac asked her as Ben handed her a glass.

'Yep!' she replied as cheerfully as possible, though Ben was shooting her a less than flat-matey look. Or perhaps that was just his face. Anyway, she was starting to appreciate why the audience needed to numb their senses with alcohol tonight: it wasn't the worst gig she'd been to, but it was pretty far from the best either.

Tom was stooped, stage left, over his bass. He was doing that thing guys who can't dance do when they're called upon to, flexing his knees up and down, like a hunch-backed Jack-in-the-box. Meanwhile a short guy with lovely black curls and a beard stood bolt upright centre stage, stroking an acoustic guitar and singing up to the ceiling in a mellifluous voice and a Northern accent, something about ego rhyming with mango and finishing in let it go, let it go, let it go. It was much nicer than she'd expected: light, fast, with a jaunty polka beat on a minor key tune. But the second song was trying to sound angry. Just like Tom himself it succeeded, if anything, a little too well.

Halfway through Elisabeth's eyes wandered back towards Tom, and she found him looking at her. He was sucking his cheek in, concentrating on his chords, his face otherwise expressionless. She wondered whether that was what was meant by 'trite'. She'd have to Google it at work, since it didn't look like the flat had cable or a dictionary.

The band carried on for another five songs; the upbeat ones always the best in her opinion. More than once she caught her foot tapping to the music, and more than once she caught Tom looking her way. Each time she hoped it was his ex he was thinking of up there, with that pale angry face.

When he came back down he was dripping with sweat. Elisabeth hadn't appreciated the physical demands of bouncing up and down under the spotlights. Back when she wo-manned the big copper timpanies at the back of the regional philharmonic, she was expected to remain still and poker straight as she counted bars in her gold-embroidered uniform. Early composers were the worst, the Bachs and Handels of this world, keeping the percussionists idle for hundreds of bars at a time in between the odd bombastic crash. Up on her platform at the back of the stage she had one chance only: for that short 128th bar she was a soloist, preferably a loud and flamboyant soloist, so she had to get the count exactly right because the conductor was too busy keeping the brass section in tempo to give her her cue. Her brain had got so used to it over the years, to this day she would start counting to any repetitive patterns her brain picked on, all of its own accord. Borderline autistic, which back then wasn't yet cool, but thankfully it was already part of the job description for quants.

Tom had taken off his green sweater and was sporting a once-white t-shirt which, now it was wet, stuck alluringly to his boyish chest. She tried hard not to stare but thought he might have noticed anyway. Mac handed him the beer he'd saved for him, and he started gulping it down.

'Liked it?' he asked, but he wasn't looking at either of them.

'Yes, that was nice,' she offered lamely. 'What are you guys called again?'

'Trite.'

'Very funny. No really: what are you called?'

'Never mind.'

'Oh come on!' she laughed, 'What?'

'No, they're called, "Never Mind".' Mac intervened with a concerned look on his face.

'Oh,' she said 'OK, sorry.'

'Anyway, where did we get you from, Elisabeth Ruth Bennet? How come you needed my old room?' Tom asked, putting his empty pint down and crossing his long arms. The angry young man was back in town, and she wondered what to say to make him go away again and call back his sparkly-eyed doppelganger instead.

'I just came back from the New York,' she said in the end.

'Why?'

'Because I'm British, and I like living in England?'

'Ha ha!' he glowered at her, arms still crossed. Who did that remind her of? Oh that's right: Will Kingsley when she was telling him about the spreadsheet. Well at least with Tom she wouldn't have to see him ever again after tonight.

'And why don't you have your own place?' he asked, head cocked back, eyes still a-glower. Gosh, it really was uncanny, now she thought about it. And ironic too. Tom and Will looked nothing like each other. In fact the Golden Boy and the young Trustafarian would almost certainly have despised each other on sight.

But they'd definitely have agreed to despise her on sight more.

Go figure. Maybe it was her accent, or just her voice. She had the kind of childish, high-pitched voice they had to coach out of Margaret Thatcher before they let her give speeches. Oh well, never mind indeed. You can't go around pleasing everyone. Elisabeth took a deep breath and made a conscious effort to sound and look neutral, indifferent, and above all not as hostile as she felt. Which wasn't easy when it came to discussing Mike.

'Well I was buying a place,' she said, 'but I moved out before I went to the US. Things weren't all that great with my own Mr Right anymore, if you must know.'

Her attempt to channel her inner Iron Lady had failed miserably. She ended in a mumble. Why was she bringing Mike up anyway? Perhaps, just perhaps, something to do with Tom's wet t-shirt and ex-girlfriend? Meanwhile now Mac seemed to prick up his ears, so she turned around to look at him. At which he looked down, went beetroot red, nodded at Tom, harrumphed and headed for the bar. Elisabeth smiled after him, but turning back to Tom she found him as angry as ever.

'So when you need a break from someone, you're just "off to New York", are you?' he continued, shaking his angry head as preciously as he could. There was perhaps something aristocratic about him. Or perhaps there wasn't and he was just born in the wrong decade, when angry young men weren't the subject of plays anymore. Perhaps that made him even angrier. But the funniest part was to think that somehow he had her down as some kind of Sloane Ranger, based on the fact that she was still sober and trying her best to show good manners to complete and increasingly strange strangers.

'Look, Tom, I had to go for my work, that's all. The timing just happened to be spot on,' she said, and tucked a lose strand of hair back behind her ear.

'What work?'

'Computer work. Research... some "knowledge transfer" ' she shrugged, miming the quotation marks to distance herself from the subject, aware that quantitative finance made neither good dinner-table nor indeed good Saturday-night-indie-gig conversation.

'What kind of research?' asked Tom, craning his head towards her, his arms still crossed.

'Market research... nothing interesting really.'

'Fish markets? Meat markets? Flea markets?'

'Stock markets.'

She had not thought it possible, but his look turned even more threatening:

'What, you're a fucking banker?'

'I am a banker, yes! If you like,' she said, beginning to feel more disturbed than puzzled by him.

'I don't like. I hate people like you,' he said, with slow deliberate emphasis.

'Well, I don't like to say, but it shows,' she replied, and crossed her arms too.

His face relaxed a fraction:

'You're just trying to wind me up, aren't you?'

'Not at all. But I kind of wish I were.'

'Why d'ye have to be so bloody chirpy then?' he muttered, and with one simple question got all her defences right up again.

She would not have been half as vexed, had she not felt justly accused. Tom did have a point: she ought not to be "so bloody chirpy", not after reading the texts and emails Mike was now sending her daily. Especially not in the company of one of Lily Cheng's more idiosyncratic and yet strangely compelling male acquaintances, whom she'd known for all of two hours.

Then again, she realised as Tom glared on at her, just because she routinely beat herself up for doing a bit too well without Mike, did not give this guy the right to do the same.

'Well, I'm very sorry that I can't help being chirpy. But I don't see how my being miserable would help you in any way.'

Tom narrowed his eyes as if he needed a double take, and she realised that perhaps she'd been a little harsh. The guy had after all only just been dumped, so she started again in a more compassionate tone:

'But I'm really sorry you've had a crap week, Tom, I mean it's...'

'Somehow I just want to …,' he interrupted before she could say: terrible.

She didn't hear the end of his sentence either, because the next band had started sound check, with the same ear-splitting effect as the previous one. For goodness' sake, this place...

'I'm sorry I can't hear you,' she mouthed, plugging her ears.

'I just want to...' something something, she heard in a brief lull in the Larsen hell. She unplugged one ear to mime the international sign for: rewind.

'I JUST WANT TO FUCKING KILL YOU!' he screamed, one fist raised, just as someone cut the amps, so that everyone but everyone in the room heard him.

And then deafening silence.

This place was a lot bigger than Elisabeth had realised, now that every single one of its occupants was staring at her.

'Oh good, yes, go on! Externalise the pain and the anger, I'm all for it. Come on now, Tom, have a go!' she said, squaring up to him.

Ain't adrenaline a hoot?

'Sorry, I'm sorry…' Tom said, dropping his fist back. 'I'm sorry, I don't know what...'

To everyone's relief the band started playing and Mac appeared huffing at Elisabeth's side again.

'Now look, Tom…' he started.

'Sorry,' Tom said, 'I'm really sorry,' he said again, staring at his hand as if it were an object alien to him.

'Elisabeth, are you OK?' Mac said. 'I'm sorry. Excuse him, he's not himself.'

'Look, it's OK, he didn't…'

'Sorry,' Tom said again. He was staring at the floor now and looking, if anything, baffled.

'I know, you said that already!' she laughed, then wiped the smile off her face, remembering that "being so bloody chirpy" seemed to be the very thing that made him so angry.

To make matters worse, people were starting to push and shove as they tried to cop a good look not at the stage, but at that girl and bloke what wanted to kill each other. She found herself pressed closer to Tom and Mac. Mac kept frantically looking from her to Tom and back, Tom kept staring down at his hands, and just then Ben, Bombshell and his girlfriend decided to join the melee. Great: just when she didn't want a larger audience. Someone asked who was going for the next round, and to her relief Mac despatched Tom to the bar with Bombshell.

'I'm so sorry, Elisabeth. I'm sure he meant nothing by it. Are you OK?' he asked.

'Of course I'm OK!' she said, but her tone was short, and Mac didn't buy it. 'I'll be fine, is he always this…?'

'What happened?' Ben asked. Where could he have been? The little boys room? Was that up two flights of stairs and across the street?

'Tom sort of screamed that he wanted to kill her,' Mac explained.

Ben nodded as if this were perfectly normal.

'He did not, evidently, kill me.' Elisabeth said.

'Such a drama queen!' Ben said, rolling his big grey eyes, and she couldn't be sure whether he meant Tom, or herself.

'He can be a little intense sometimes,' Mac clarified. 'You see, Elisabeth, he's not very happy at the moment.'

'Sure. OK. Whatever,' she said. At this point she'd had enough attention to last her a lifetime, her voice was straining, and she was getting keen to move on. 'Look, no one was killed, no harm done. I'm fine, OK?'

The three of them stood there a little longer and listened, waiting for the next round.

Tom and Bombshell came back, the former looking sheepish, the latter staring straight ahead of him, and both of them trying to pretend the awkwardness wasn't there. She was already sufficiently recovered to find it amusing. What she wasn't finding amusing, however, were the brazen stares she was still drawing from the rest of the room.

'You sure you're OK?' Tom asked once he'd finished handing beers around.

'I told you, I'm fine.'

'Sorry.'

'Apologies accepted. Subject closed, OK?'

' 'you sure?'

'Yes!'

' 'you sure?' Mac double checked.

'YES! God, you guys are funny!' she laughed, shaking her head.

'You'll fit right in,' said Tom.

Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved